


the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one

by hydrospanners



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: Angst, Casually Uses Lyrics As Titles Like It's 2007, Family Feels, Gen, Mentions of Female Jedi Knight x Doc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 03:11:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14179248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrospanners/pseuds/hydrospanners
Summary: Rhese Velaran has always imagined himself as a man of principle. A Jedi to the bone. But when he's forced to choose between his duty and his family, Rhese learns the hard way there's a lot he doesn't know of his own heart.





	the things you do for love are gonna come back to you one by one

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Love, Love, Love by The Mountain Goats.

Rhese Velaran had always known, in all the secret places a person could keep their knowledge, that when the time came to make the hard choices, he would choose what was right. No matter how difficult, no matter what it cost him. He would be guided by reason and the Force and he would do what was right.

 

# # #

 

Rhese Velaran often wondered if he would ever get used to being wrong.

 

# # #

 

Lights of warning flashed across the console; thin blue holograms played out the coming disaster in slow motion. The distress beacon pulsed over the intercom and the words of the crew’s last transmission scrolled across every monitor he could see. The same message, over and over and over, almost louder than the klaxons in its silence.

_This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help. This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help. This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help. This is a civilian vessel–_

Nirea had said this was a trap. She had said it even as she ordered the jump. She was like that, his sister. Forever diving into the belly of the beast, just to see if she could give it indigestion.

“You can’t just fly us into a trap and leave,” he had told her as she half-ran for the hangar bay. “They need you here. Someone has to give orders!”

“You’ll be here,” she had said, so easily. “You give orders.”

Rhese had been waiting half his life to hear those words. Had been waiting for her to give up just a shred of her control, for her to extend just a fraction of the trust she put in other people. He had been waiting to feel her equal. It should have brought him satisfaction.

He mostly just felt dread.

“Nirea, they have other pilots. We only have one of you.”

“They have pilots,” she had agreed. “But they aren’t me. They can’t pull this off.”

“Can  _you_ pull this off?”

“I guess we’re about to find out.”

 

# # #

 

The trap had been two-pronged. They hadn’t seen it then. Maybe they should have, but they hadn’t.

Now there was a decision to be made and there was no one to make it but Rhese.

It was clear what the Empire expected. They had thought it would be Nirea in his shoes, Nirea making this choice–he would have to worry about how they had known to expect her later–and they had tried to anticipate her.

He wondered sometimes when they would stop making that mistake.

Rhese had always been the predictable one. Safe and cautious and reasonable. He had always been the type to choose the many over the one. He had always been the one to choose the bird in hand.

It was clear what the crew expected. He could feel it in the weight of the silence on the bridge. He could feel it in the burn of Kira’s anger and the twisting ache of Doc’s grief. He could feel it in the sharp pinprick of Rusk’s disappointment. They knew, just as he had always known, what he would choose.

Rhese watched the holographic destruction replay on the console with a clenched jaw.

_This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help. This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help. This is a civilian vessel. Please send help. Please send help. Please send help._

“Commander.”

Tis’aa watched the console too. “Master Jedi?”

“Protect our fighters.”

 

# # #

 

Rhese had spent a lifetime watching his sister surprise people. She defied expectations at every turn and she did it with a laugh and a wink. Easy as anything. Carefree. Like all those expectations never even mattered, like they just slipped from her shoulders.

But that was a lie. The expectations didn’t go anywhere. They just stayed on your shoulders and got heavier and heavier and–Durasteel bent beneath Rhese’s white and bloodless knuckles as he gripped the console, as he realized that every inch of Rea’s nonchalance had been a fucking lie this whole fucking time and he–

He–

He could still feel the weight of the silence on the bridge. Tis’aa watched him with keen eyes while the crew held its breath. Time grew slow and heavy.

The carrier’s last transmission scrolled across the monitors.

_This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help. This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help. This is a civilian vessel. Please send help. Please send help. Please send help. Please send–_

“You have your orders,” Rhese said.

 

# # #

 

In the end, the Imperials fired on their own people.

A distant part of Rhese understood the logic. A war was as much about resources as it was about battles and soldiers and guns. A ship, even a civilian transport, was too valuable a resource to hand over to the enemy.

He told himself that they were already dead when it happened. He told himself they had suffocated before the first shot was even fired.

He knew it wasn’t true.

 

# # #

 

_This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help. This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help. This is a civilian vessel–_

 

# # #

 

The ship was called  _Danurek’s Peace_. Class-C civilian transport, Imperial registered. 3,276 souls aboard.

He wondered if their slaves counted as souls.

 

# # #

 

He tracked the flickering hologram of Rea’s fighter across the battlefield display, his stomach twisting with anger and regret and hope.

If anyone could turn his failure into a victory, it was her. If anyone could make his sacrifice worth it–

Rhese choked on the thought.

 

# # #

 

There was no surprise victory. No last minute gamble to turn this disaster into a wild success.

Nirea barely got the squadron out alive.

He listened to the deck crew swear as her fighter screamed across the hangar, engines igniting in a roar as soon as they hit the oxygenated air. Over the raucous, he could just barely make out the sound of her voice over the comm, tinny and distant.

“Jump!” She shouted. “Make the jump!”

Rhese swallowed. Every shield was flashing red on the holographic display. His eyes caught on the debris field that had once been _Danurek’s Peace_ drifting in the distance, grey and hollow. He could see the bodies among the scraps of metal if he looked hard enough.

_This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help._

“Jump,” he ordered.

 

# # #

 

The hangar was chaos. Her fighter was a blackened, smoking husk in the center of it, a trail of deep grooves trailing behind where it rested in charred pieces. Rea was nowhere to be seen and a thousand voices seemed to be talking at once.

“Crazy Jedi.”

“Oughtta be dead.”

“Saved my life.”

“Thought we were gonna bite it.”

“Never seen anything like her.”

A hand clasped his shoulder and Rhese looked into the tired, glassy eyes of one of the fighter pilots. Lieutenant Pashdramaan? Pashdramoor? She smiled lazily. “Will you thank your sister for me, Master Jedi? She really pulled our collective asses out of the fire.”

Rhese nodded dumbly.

_This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help._

He found himself in a dark supply room on the other end of the deck, vomiting into a trash chute.

3,276 souls. He could feel every one of them like a punch in his gut.

 

# # #

 

Nirea would be on the bridge. Rhese emptied his stomach into the trash chute again and again and again and thought how he ought to be on the bridge.

The battle may have been done, but the work would go on for hours yet. Assessing damage, managing emergency repairs, taking care of casualties, sending reports back to Carrick Station and Coruscant. There were a million more things to do and he should have been doing them himself. He had been in command. He had made the call.

_This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help._

Nirea would be taking care of it. She knew just the same as him what price he had paid for her life. She would be feeling every one of those 3,276 punches to the gut but she would still be on the bridge. She would still be getting shit done.

It was a truth they didn’t often acknowledge, but she was stronger than him. She always had been.

She would have done the right thing.

 

# # #

 

They met in the medbay.

Doc had said it was the only way to get Rea off the bridge. She was burned and beaten half to hell but she would stop for him. If he needed her, she would come.

It was obviously a trap, but Rhese walked into it anyway.

He lay in his stiff cot alone in a private room and waited, sick to his stomach with the walls closing in around him.

_This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help. This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help. This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help._

Then she was there.

Burned and beaten half to hell. 3, 276 souls pressing down on her shoulders.

She smiled at him.

 

# # #

 

Doc pumped them both full of fluids. For hydration, he claimed, but Rhese could feel the sedatives like molasses in his veins.

He let it pass, just this once. And if he noticed Doc’s hands and eyes lingering a little too long on Rea, if his was a little too soft when he looked at her, well… Rhese had just killed 3,276 people for her. He wasn’t in a position to lecture anyone about attachments now.

Rea reached for his hand in the narrow space between their cots and waited in silence. He remembered all the times he’d accused her of not knowing when to shut the fuck up.

Rhese Velaran often wondered if he would ever get used to being wrong.

 

# # #

 

“It was the wrong thing,” he said, when the quiet finally got too heavy. “I should have saved those people.”

Rhese waited, every sense in him pulled taut, anticipating a thrum of emotion that never came.

Rea’s fingers only tightened around his, her thumb drawing warm circles on the back of his hand. He pushed at her edges, searching in the most obvious fucking way for a reaction, for some hint of what she was feeling.

There was no emotion. Only peace.

He barely managed not to laugh at his own joke.

“It was my fault,” she told him in that casual way she had. Like she might be talking about a broken glass and not 3,276 lost souls. “I walked into the trap. I got in the cockpit. You did the best you could with what I gave you, but it was my command, Rhese. My responsibility.”

_This is a civilian vessel. Engines are dead. Losing oxygen. Please send help._

“Are you planning to just let me blame you for everything for the rest of our lives?”

“Maybe,” she said, and Rhese heard the frown in her voice. “It’s usually my fault anyway.”

Two years ago, he would have agreed without hesitation.

He knew better now.

“It was the wrong thing,” he repeated.

Rea didn’t argue. He glanced at her, and Rhese thought he could see those 3,276 souls pressing on her chest. She was hardly breathing.

“I would do it again,” he said.

Her eyes flicked over to his. He smiled, thin and sad but trying.

“I would do it again.”


End file.
